June 30, 2010

June 13 after planting the tomatoes but before covering with mulch.

The seeder Cris used to plant this weekend.

One of the tomato plants after 2 weeks in the ground


New gutters for the barn and rain barrels.

Using screen door mesh to keep bugs out of water.

Now that the barn is 99.9 percent complete (little odds and ends will be finished when it's not 90-100 degrees outside), we have been turning our attention to the vegetable garden. We planted over 70 tomato plants, some squash, cucs, zucchini and okra. I do not recommend using the 'newspaper pots' that we blogged about earlier..... the plants did not do well in them...too wet I think. As you can see by the photos, we did used newspapers as weed block, followed by a cover of mulch and compost which seems to work pretty good. We decided to do the planting on one of the hottest weekends we have had so far. It was rough but I had a mini umbrella with stand that I carried around with me. We planted on June 13th and despite the lack of rain the last couple of weeks, the tomotos are doing great. Some of our other plants did not do so well but we planted more seeds to replace them. This past Sunday we planted beans, peppers, sweet corn and more squash and cucs. Cris bought a seed planter that you walk behind and the seeds drop out and then the planter has a part on it that covers the seed. It worked pretty good.

We did get a great rainstorm this past Saturday so hopefully that will help the vegies sprout.

We have a lot of wild blackberries growing and the organic blackberry plant we have at home in Memphis is blooming with berries.....unfortunately, the dogs eat them as soon as they get ripe.

As I stated before, at times, it seems like we are working on the equipment more than actually working on the farm. The tractor gave us a fit this past weekend but it's nothing that Cris can't fix....it's just finding the time to do it. He seems to think the gas tank is dirty and it's clogging up the carburetor. It's an old Ford tractor without a filter....but he plans to put a filter in between the gas tank and carburetor to clean up the gunk. I'm glad he knows what he is doing.

This past weekend we also put up 100 feet of gutter and installed rain barrels on the barn. The goal is to catch the rain (if it ever rains) and then use it to water the plants.

This weekend we are harvesting honey. The bees have been so busy so we are hoping for some really sweet honey.

The wheat has been harvested off our property and the natural grasses from the area are growing in nicely. This means we don't have to do much planting in the way of a cover crop...which is a good thing.

Didn't get any pictures taken this past weekend. (June 4-6). We were super busy working on the trim, finishing up the painting and other little things that have to be done to call the barn complete. This weekend we hope to have all the trim inside and outside the barn finished and then insulate the little areas in the corners and certain places on the roof that need some foam insulation to keep the bugs out.

After that, it's clean up the barn and start organizing the inside. We plan to purchase barn gates to use as doors for the area that will house the ATV's so we can keep them locked up. Also, in a couple months, we will buy a dump truck load of gravel to put in the 'garage' area of the barn. We need the entire driveway graveled but that will have to wait until it's in our budget. For now, the dirt driveway is fine but come winter, it may get messy and hard to drive on the dirt.

If all goes well, we will plant the tomotoes Sunday.

Coming Down the Home Stretch

The floor to the shop after it was painted.

The Barn as of Memorial Day 2010

There is an end in sight..... we will have this barn finished hopefully this coming weekend. Memorial Day Weekend was spent painting the 24x24 floor in the shop area, putting up 4 walls which included 3 windows and a 6 ft. wide barn door that Cris made, painting the outside walls (Sandy did ALL that herself), painting the outside trim (Sandy again), plus more roof work.

We met with the electric company and it seems that we will need at least 2 utility poles to get from the road to the barn. They are going to install a temporary electric line like they do for home construction. The cost for the poles run about $1000 a pole.